Nexsan Enters ILM Fray

Nexsan Technologies' purchase of AESign Evertrust positions it to achieve the goal of becoming the pre-eminent ILM CAS vendor.

With its acquisition of ILM specialist Evertrust, Nexsan Technologies is positioning itself to become the information lifecycle management vendor to beat.
Nexsan Technologies, of Woodland Hills, Calif., announced Tuesday that it has purchased the Quebec, Ontario-based AESign Evertrust, which develops ILM, CAS (Content-Addressed Storage) and compliance software for digital data storage, archiving and management.

"We are working to evolve into a systems company rather than just offering our storage systems, and we believe we have the technology, through this acquisition, to position ourselves as a leader in the ILM CAS and compliance space," said Nexsan vice president Brendan Kinkade.
Nexsan plans to achieve this goal by developing a second-generation ILM product that combines Evertrusts technology with Nexsans disk-based storage systems.

Read more here about Nexsan combining forces with ONStor to provide a network-attached storage solution that competes with those offered by EMC.
The new product, due out within a month, will be a fully integrated ILM solution that also supports optical and tapean important consideration for companies that must comply with regulatory requirements, which dictate that data be stored on WORM-compatible media, Kinkade said.
"We have a Centera-killer," said Kinkade, referring to EMCs market-leading ILM solution. "Its the first true second-generation ILM solution."
To read more about EMCs recent plans to unveil advanced Centera tools, click here.
Whether Nexsan can succeed in penetrating the tough ILM marketand beating EMC at its own gameremains to be seen, but its strategy gives it a reasonable chance of success, said Steve Duplessie, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group of Milford, Mass.
"Centera dominates the market by a landslide, but Nexsan realizes that Centera does have some shortcomings, such as performance, proprietary APIs and the fact that its a locked environmentyou can only use EMC gear with it," he said.
Nexsan plans to combat these issues by incorporating disk, tape and optical technology, which Duplessie said could make all the difference.
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